"All right, then, we are good for them." How cheery the Colonel's voice was! It thrilled my spirits with its courage. And we needed courage, for just then, Lieutenant Beecher was stretching himself wearily before his superior officer, saying briefly:
"I have my death-wound; good-night." And like a brave man who had done his best he pillowed his head face downward on his arms, and spoke not any more on earth forever.
It has all been told in history how that day went by. When evening fell upon that eternity-long time, our outlook was full of gloom. Hardly one-half of our company was able to bear arms. Our horses had all been killed, our supplies and hospital appliances were lost. Our wounds were undressed; our surgeon was slowly dying; our commander was helpless, and his lieutenant dead. We had been all day without food or water. We were prisoners on this island, and every man of us had half a hundred jailers, each one a fiend in the high art of human torture.
I learned here how brave and resourceful men can be in the face of disaster. One of our number had already begun to dig a shallow well. It was a muddy drink, but, God be praised, it was water! Our supper was a steak cut from a slaughtered horse, but we did not complain. We gathered round our wounded commander and did what we could for each other, and no man thought of himself first. Our dead were laid in shallow graves, without a prayer. There was no time here for the ceremonies of peace; and some of the men, before they went out into the Unknown that night, sent their last messages to their friends, if we should ever be able to reach home again.
At nightfall came a gentle shower. We held out our hands to it, and bathed our fevered faces. It was very dark and we must make the most of every hour. The Indians do not fight by night, but the morrow might bring its tale of battles. So we digged, and shaped our stronghold, and told over our resources, and planned our defences, and all the time hunger and suffering and sorrow and peril stalked about with us. All night the Indians gathered up their dead, and all night they chanted their weird, blood-chilling death-songs, while the lamentations of the squaws through that dreadful night filled all the long hours with hideous mourning unlike any other earthly discord. But the darkness folded us in, and the blessed rain fell softly on all alike, on skilful guide, and busy soldier, on the wounded lying helpless in their beds of sand, on the newly made graves of those for whom life's fitful fever was ended. And above all, the loving Father, whose arm is never shortened that He cannot save, gave His angels charge over us to keep us in all our ways.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE SUNLIGHT ON OLD GLORY
The little green tent is made of sod,
And it is not long, and it is not broad,
But the soldiers have lots of room.
And the sod is a part of the land they saved,
When the flag of the enemy darkly waved,
A symbol of dole and gloom.
—WALT MASON.
"Baronet, we must have that spade we left over there this morning. Are you the man to get it?" Sharp Grover said to me just after dusk. "We've got to have water or die, and Burke here can't dig a well with his toe nails, though he can come about as near to it as anybody." Burke was an industrious Irishman who had already found water for us. "And then we must take care of these." He motioned toward a still form at my feet, and his tone was reverent.